I looked up a few condos in 3301 NE 183rd Street. The property appraiser put the assessed value for unit 2509 at $135,506 (in 2009 it was appraised at $548,716). Quite a drop. It sold for $790,000 in February so it was never worth $135,506. Unit 1503's assessed value was $137,527 in 2010 ($488,012 in 2009). May 11th it sold for $810,000. Unit 809 sold for $655,000 in September of 2010. It was assessed at $135,506 for 2010. Unit 1509 went for $700,000 in February, it was assessed at $135,506 in 2010 (in 2009 it was assessed at $490,543).
My question, is the property appraiser's office really incompetent on their assessments or are they giving the developers a free ride? Are we losing county property tax funds on undervalued properties? I would say that a property that sold for $810,000 given an assessed value of $137,527 is pretty far off the mark. It is hard for me to accept a tax hike when you see assessments like this. Remember my examples are only a few units in a large building of 223 condos. How are the rest in this building and other buildings under-valued at our expense?
Here is the tax information for one unit:
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15 comments:
Nice pick up. Wonder whose names are involved.
Even the 2009 assessed values were too low if the properties are now going in the 700-800 thousand range
Do you know who the developer is?
PENINSULA II DEVELOPERS, INC. is one... The name of the building is the Peninsula II. It was built in 2007. I would suppose that is the developer.
Here is another. It sold 8/2010 for $1,030,000. That unit was assessed at $156,485 in 2010 (2009 for $664,452). It was bought by Peninsula 2501, Inc. That Corp. appears to be two people living there.
You are correct. They are completely incompetent as well as dishonest. Who can forget that they gave sleazy Julio Robaina a free ride on his strip mall for years because they didn't realize it was built.
There is no defending apprasials like that. It smells of more than stupidity.
Don't you think that an elected appraiser as opposed to a PROFESSIONAL one lends itself to a creation of such issues?
If anyone can be an appraiser, then they will not necessarily know what they are looking at if they review staff work product and then staff can pull BS.
Of course, our property appraiser has probably not looked too closely at anything. He was elected as a "caretaker"; a short termer. I suspect he is going to hate leaving the position since it has turned out great for him with his staff doing the work.
Also possibility of a little mortgage fraud action, did you check adjacent buildings and see what units went for there.
Regardless Pedro Gracia is an incompetent commission lapdog.
Did you report this to the Property Appraiser? They will investigate and change the assessment if appropriate.
Or maybe that the mentioned discrepancy is due to Chinese Drywall issues that were in some but not all units in that development. The issue may look strange on the surface but you are missing all the facts on this one.
I appreciate your willingness to dig into these things but wish you'd act a bit more reporter-like and seek answers from the target of your investigation.
Have you contacted the Property Appraiser for comment? Have they identified this as a problem or did they explain what the reason was for the low appraisal last year?
Just throwing stuff out there dilutes your value as a watchdog.
Why is everyone so willing to assign what I am and what I should be doing? I never said I was a watchdog. Go read the Ricker report for Watchdog.
I throw stuff out there. That is what I have been doing for 4 years. Newspaper reporters, citizens etc. can follow-up what I dig up. I cannot very well be anonymous and then call people.
love you, genius.
I am not an appraiser, I am a real estate agent. I think this situation is common. There are 223 units in this condo complex, of which about 160 have sold. All the sales this year have been for about 150% of the assessed values. Last year 139%. The year before 131%. So the values in the complex have been rising.
When new condo buildings are developed, the county really has no idea what the properties will ultimately be worth. So the initial assessment is somewhat arbitrary until the market determines the true value of each unit.
I also think that the reassessment of all the condo units doesn't take place until the developer turns over the control of the complex to the owners. I do not know anything about this particular complex, but I would bet that it is still under developer control and that once it goes to the owners, then the county will be sending out higher assessments.
I have downloaded the complete records of all sales and assessments for this development in Excel format if anyone is interested.
Thanks send it to me geniusofdespair@yahoo.com. There were sales in the million dollar range in 2007. I can understand the half million appraisals based on your analysis but the $135,000 doesn't make sense. Maybe the system has to change in the appraisers office. But your comment proves my point made in my comment above--- readers can help sort out what I present.
Hey everybody. After reading your posts I reported these "under assessments" to the property appraiser because I think we deserve an explanation. After all we are the taxpayers! Here's the scoop according to their office...
These properties have Chinese drywall. Because of the bad drywall, they say that state law gives the owners a break and they don't have to pay taxes on the building…they only have to pay taxes on the land value. After the Chinese drywall is fixed they said the value will go back up. I asked if it applied to developers and they said it doesn't matter who owns the property. Seems unfair that even developers can get these tax breaks for bad Chinese drywall.
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